Company transitions: do small and family-held North Carolina businesses need succession assistance?

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  • February 28, 2019
Creator
  • Venne, Bridget
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of City and Regional Planning
Abstract
  • Although North Carolina is home to many multi-national companies such as Bank of America, Wachovia, and Lowe's Home Improvement, the state economy maintains a strong dependence on small business. Small businesses provide North Carolina three specific economic benefits: providing jobs for a large percentage of the labor force, providing potential career ladders to those employees, and fostering innovation. Despite this there is often significant controversy and misinformation about whether to allocate funding and assistance to attracting new, usually large, businesses or sustaining existing firms of all sizes. While larger businesses undoubtedly provide economic growth and benefits, focusing only on one segment of the business spectrum inhibits important economic diversification. Further investigation into the magnitude and impact of small business in North Carolina can help determine if greater policy assistance in these areas would be of benefit to the state's economy. It is clear that small business is important to the North Carolina economy, and that the employment potential and innovation intensity of small business jobs are worth developing. The question is: where can governmental assistance to support small businesses be the most efficient and effective? If increasing the lifespan of small businesses is the goal, one potential and often overlooked area for state or regionally based technical assistance is the area of business succession. Business succession occurs when an existing business undergoes a change in ownership. State and local governments can be of significant assistance in management transitions. Some of the types of assistance well-suited to government intervention are already in place in other forms of technical and managerial assistance, but some will require new initiatives. In order to determine if North Carolina small and family-owned businesses would benefit from succession planning assistance, it is vital to know how many companies are currently facing this issue. In order to determine whether it is in the best interest of North Carolina policymakers to attempt to provide this assistance, it is important to evaluate the potential impact of unsuccessful management transitions on the North Carolina economy. Yet existing information regarding the status of business succession plans, or even about the ownership status of small firms, is not readily available. Therefore, this Masters Project has developed and tested an online survey instrument to measure the economic risk posed by small business succession in North Carolina.
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Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • Goldstein, Harvey A.
Degree
  • Master of City and Regional Planning
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Location
  • North Carolina, North Carolina, United States
Extent
  • 60 p.
Access right
  • Open access
Date uploaded
  • December 10, 2010

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file details Company transitions: do small and family-held North Carolina businesses need succession assistance? 2019-04-25 Public Download